9/26/2006

Web 2.0 for a better today !!

The first thought that crosses our minds when we think about globalization is a bunch of job losses, cultural overhauls, turmoil, a job market totally tilted towards locations like India. While some part of this is indeed true, the ramifications have been far more than what is obvious! Globalization in it's pure form with no other changes happening alongside would have resulted in a clear job tilt...

But, such is not the case...Globalization has been accompanied by two other movements, one of them more recently, which have altered it's course significantly. I am talking about the OpenSource movement and Web 2.0! Considered in isolation, these three movements have their own set of objectives, each of them very different from the other.

Globalization is about having an economical, political and financial level playing field. Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's sources. Some consider it as a philosophy, and others consider it as a pragmatic methodology.Philosophy of Web 2.0 is to let go of control, share ideas and code, build on what others have built, free your data.

How do these work together? Well, for starters, Web 2.0 is about building on existing services, re-using webservices and pay per usage models characterized by examples like Amazon's grid computing, computing clouds etc. What this means is that any company small/big can use such services to start their business and thus save a lot in terms of setup costs! Add to this, the option of using open source software..makes it even cheaper..Free software combined with "cheap" (pay per usage) hardware AND a low cost market place just makes it an invincible combination...which means a bright idea with good execution from any location is all that is needed to compete in this market. Time to market cycles have grown shorter and barriers for next generation entrepreneurs are almost non-existent...

All this has resulted in a mindset change.. people are trying to do new things, companies are investing more in people (because their S/W, hardware costs come down significantly accompanied with very short time to market cycles) resulting in a booming job market, not just in low-cost offshore locations, but just about everywhere. A market with such a competitive landscape can only do wonders for the customer and will break the shackles imposed on him from fat pocket monopolistic firms! Change is always good, but this change with Web2.0, OpenSource, Globalization trio is just better! Landscape changes => Companies change => Customers enjoy!